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Quick Start Guide To Natural Beekeeping With The Warre Hive
Quick Start Guide To Natural Beekeeping With The Warre Hive
BY NICK HAMPSHIRE
F R E E R E P O RT F R O M WA R R E B E E H I V E . C O M
Copyright, Legal Notice and Disclaimer:
Disclaimer: The content of this report is for educational purposes only. The information
here is not intended to be nor should it be misconstrued to be business advice or legal
advice. For legal advice you should seek the counsel of a legal professional. While all care
has been taken it is the responsibility of the reader to ensure any activities he/she engages
in follow the applicable laws in his country, state, county, and local area. No liability is
accepted by the author for any damage caused or claimed to be caused from the
information in this report. By reading past this point you are accepting these terms and
conditions.
I used the Langstroth beehive because that was the beehive that everyone else was using.
What I needed was a beehive that was smart, simple and sustainable. If only I had known about the
Warre Hive! I would have saved so much time and trouble over the years.
You see, the Warre Hive is simple and sustainable. Developed by a beekeeper in France, the Warre Hive
can give you the sustainable beekeeping experience you have been searching for.
I know you’ll find this report a great resource to help you get started with the Warre Top Bar Beehive.
Kindest regards,
Nick Hampshire - http://www.warrebeehive.com
A Top Bar Hive is a beehive with no frames or wax foundation. In a Top Bar Hive, the
honeybees create all the wax cells from scratch, just like they do naturally in the wild.
Instead of frames, a Top Bar Hive has Top Bars. If you took a normal frame and removed
everything but the uppermost part...that is a Top Bar. Simple, but effective!
Top Bar Hives allow the bees to build beeswax the way they want to, instead of forcing
them to build cells from pre-pressed wax foundation. This is more natural, since the bees
are building the beehive how they want it, instead of being forced to build the hive how
mankind wants it.
Each Hive Box has its own set of Top Bars. When the hive boxes are stacked on top of each
other, the top bars in each box provide a foundation for the bees to build comb on.
Whenever they come to a set of top bars, the bees stop building comb, and begin again on
the bottom side of those top bars.
They do this because they need bee space between the bottom of the comb and the top of
the top bar. They need about 4 mm worth of space to move around in.
This is smart beekeeping! That 4 mm of space allows you to remove the hive boxes
easily. Since each box is one unit of honeycomb, each box in a Warre Hive can be worked
with independent of the others. This makes for very easy honey harvesting.
If a Top Bar breaks, you can just replace it with another one. After all, it is just a piece of
wood. If one breaks, you don’t have to build another costly frame. You can just cut another
piece of wood.
Most beehives can be time consuming to maintain. The Warre Hive is not.
The idea behind the Warre Hive is to create a natural and bee-friendly home for the bees.
The best way to achieve this is to keep out of the beehive. This translates to very low
beehive maintenance on your part.
Natural beehives in the wild survive and thrive without the help of mankind. If you give
your bees a good home to live in, they will survive and thrive too. If you just let them do
their own thing, they will get along just fine.
You don’t have to open your hive to help them survive. When we humans open a beehive,
we destroy the heat and scent environment the honeybees work so hard to maintain. It is
very easy to hurt the hive if one is not careful.
Of course, sometimes it is necessary to open the beehive. You need to open the beehive to
take off honey. Also, you may need to add some natural remedies for diseases and mites.
If you do want to watch your bees, you can put observation windows into your beehive.
Then you can see the bees without opening the beehive.
You should use the Warre Hive because it is a Smart, Simple and Sustainable beehive.
It is a Smart Beehive
Smart beekeeping is beekeeping that focuses on what is best for the bees. I already
mentioned about not opening your beehive too often. This is just one aspect of bee-friendly
beekeeping.
The Warre Hive has no foundation. This is smart because it allows the bees to make their
own foundation.
Did you know that bees will make their own honeycomb faster than they will make
honeycomb on pre-pressed foundation? I have seen it happen over and over in my own
Warre Hives. Honeybees just want to make their own foundation.
When you let your bees build natural cell sizes, you will notice that sometimes the cells are
larger than average. Other times you will notice that they are smaller then average.
Sometime you will have small and large cells side by side. Sometimes one beehive will
build a smaller cell size, and other hives will build a larger cell size.
Cells in natural honeycomb are not fixed sizes. Smart beekeeping is building a beehive that
allows the bees to choose their own honeycomb cell size.
The honeycomb cell is the “womb” of the beehive. It is where the new baby bees develop
and grow. Pre-pressed foundation tries to force this womb size to be an arbitrary size.
It would be crazy to force all the cats in the world to have the same sized wombs in order
to produce all the same sized kittens.
But that is what pre-pressed foundation does to the baby bees. Pre-pressed foundation
tries to press all honeybees into one size of “womb.” It creates an arbitrary womb size.
Let the bees do their own thing, and they will be healthier and happier.
That is all.
Not only are there less parts, but the parts themselves are simple to put together. If you
can use a tape measure, hammer and saw, you can build a Warre Hive.
All you need is some wood, nails, cloth, a wood finish and maybe some glue.
You can build a Warre Hive for about $50 to $75 US Dollars.
You can even buy Warre Hives. Check Craig’s List or look around online.
Try searching for “Buy Warre Hives” or “Warre Hive for sale”
Furthermore, you have to use frames with a Langstroth hive. Each frame requires material
and energy to produce, especially if you are using plastic frames.
Plastic frames have to be thrown away when they are too old.
After you throw them away, where will they end up?
Warre Hives don’t require frames. Eight simple top bars per box, cut from the same wood
that you use for the hive boxes and the rest of the beehive.
Sustainable beekeeping is something we can all work towards. It is a great goal to have.
Warre Hives can help you accomplish this goal a lot faster than you thought possible.
So, the first rule when using Warre Beehives is not to interfere with the rhythms of the
beehive. Leave the bees alone, and they will be much better off. And they’ll be calmer too.
The second rule you will want to follow is: give the bees plenty of room to build
honeycomb. If you have windows in your beehive, you can watch the bees build
honeycomb. You can also look through the hive entrance to see how far down the
honeycomb has been built.
When they build the comb almost to the floor, you need to put in another hive box. Just
slip the new box under the bottom hive box. Now your bees can build more comb from the
set of top bars in the new hive box. As you add new boxes under the hive, the bees will
continue building honeycomb downwards to the floor.
It is easy to harvest honey. Just remove the top one or two hive boxes at the end of the
summer. Blow the bees out of the boxes with some smoke. Cut out the honeycomb and
you’re done.
You don’t even need a honey extractor to harvest honey from a Warre Hive!
It is easy to keep bees using the Warre Hive. There is not much else you have to do.
You could have a couple beehives in your backyard, and you would not need spend any
time on them except for a couple of hours in the spring, and a few in the summer to
harvest honey. Other than that, all you need to do is keep an eye on the beehive to make
sure the bees are doing fine.
A. Set up a Warre Hive in a good location. Put the hive box onto the floor, and remove the
top bars. Spray the bees with a mixture of ½ sugar and ½ water. Then, take the queen
cage out of the bee package and find the stopper that is in one end of the queen cage.
Replace the stopper with a piece of marshmallow candy. Don’t let the queen escape!
Lay the queen cage on the hive floor in a corner towards the back of the hive. Take the
bee package and gently shake the bees over the queen cage. Shake until most of the
bees are in the hive box. Lay the bee package at the hive entrance with the opening of
the bee package is pointing towards the hive entrance.
Replace the top bars in the hive box. Put on the quilt and then the roof. Put some h o n e y
or 50/50 sugar water out for the bees to eat. Then, leave the bees alone. Do not check
them. They need to be left alone for at least 3-5 days. It is important that the bees are
not bothered with while they are adjusting to their new hive.
A. Drones are important to the health of your beehive. The drones carry the “seed” for new
bee colonies. Without the drones, new queens have no way to fertilize their eggs. It is
important that your honeybees are allowed to determine the correct drone count
in their hives. They know when they need to raise drones and they know when they
need to eliminate drones. If you leave it to the bees, that is less work for you!
If you want to build a Warre Hive yourself, you can download the Warre Hive Construction
Guide at http://www.warrebeehive.com/whcg
If you have some more questions about the Warre Hive and natural beekeeping, please
send me a message at nick@warrebeehive.com I will be glad to talk with you!